Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

As the introduction to this blog notes, I was a lobbyist in the State of Oregon for 25 years and dealt with the Oregon Legislature as a state government manager for 15 years before that.

So, there were many opportunities to experience strange stories in the confines of the State Capitol in Salem, Oregon. 

Some of them funny.  Others not so.

Here is a summary, which I like to re-live because they enable me to reflect back on 40 years of public policy involvement in Oregon.

• DEEPENING THE COLUMBIA RIVER CHANNEL:  When a bill came up
• for a vote on the House floor to appropriate the first installment of funding
• to deepen the Columbia River channel, it also included pork-barrel projects
• for Medford, Grants Pass and Klamath Falls, all cities represented by
• members of the Joint Ways and Means Committee which approves state
• funding. 
•  
• When the bill came to the 60-member House floor, I knew it had about 32 votes, enough to pass.  Of course, like any good lobbyist, I had “counted the votes.”
•  
• But it would not be possible to lose three votes pursuant to the House floor debate and thus not reach the required 31. 
• Then, an ultra-liberal representative from Eugene began railing against the bill.  That was good news for me in the sense that, the longer she talked, the more the tally of votes for the bill grew higher.  
•  
• As soon as he could from the rostrum, the late Representative Bill
• Markham, Republican from Riddle, Oregon, called for the vote. 
•  
• And, to the delight of those on the floor and in the gallery – including me –he did so with these words:  “All in favor of this bill say oink-oink” – owing of course, to the pork-barrel allocations in the bill.
•  
• Deepening the Columbia River channel stands as a huge achievement for all of us who were involved in the effort.  To this day, deeper draft ships ply their way inland from the coast to ports around Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington, and then back out to the ocean.
•  
• Which means solid economic development for the region.

1. ANSWERING A STRANGE QUESTION IN A LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE HEARING:  In a Joint Ways and Means Committee meeting, a Senate member of the committee had a state agency head just where she wanted him in his testimony on his agency’s budget. 
2.  
3. In a firm voice, she asked with emphasis:  “Okay, which is it — $500,000
4. or half a million?” 
5.  
6. The witness was not quite sure how to answer.  No one in the hearing room was sure either, including me in the back of the room as I tried to avoid laughing out loud.
7.  
8. GUTTING AND STUFFING:  A lobbyist for Eastmoreland Hospital – it
9. no longer exists in Portland, Oregon — tried to prod legislators to pass a bill requiring health insurance companies to contract with the hospital.  This included the health insurance companies I represented.
10.  
11. The original bill failed, but the opposing lobbyist did not give up.  He set a record that stands to this day:  He tried to “gut” 17 bills and “stuff” the
12. Eastmoreland mandate into those bills, all out of site of the opponents.
13.  
14. In each case, I and other health insurance lobbyists found out about the attempts and killed them all.
15. But the 17 “gut and stuff” tactics remains a record to this day.
16.  
17. PUTTING A TUGBOAT OPERATOR OUT OF BUSINESS IN COOS BAY, OREGON:  Several years ago, the Legislature decided to put a Coos Bay tugboat operator out of business simply because he also served as a pilot to bring big ships in over the bar into the Coos Bay harbor.
18.  
19. The proposal came from a lobbyist for another tug operator who demonstrated her lack of class and integrity by yelling at me in a public hallway just outside hearing rooms for the Joint Ways and Means Committee.
20.  
21. She was incensed because we had produced a letter for the record supporting our side of the issue, which was that a bar pilot should be able to continue to operate his tugboat business because, for one thing, he had persevered during bad economic times in the Coos Bay area while his competitors had fled a down economy. 
22.  
23. The letter we inserted into the public record came, incredibly, from
24. the mother of one of the individuals trying to put our client out of business.
25. She felt our operator should be allowed to continue being both a bar pilot
26. and a tug operator, and, of course, not at the same time.
27.  
28. The lobbyist who came unglued in the hallway also filed a Capitol
29. Club (the name of the professional association of lobbyists) complaint
30. alleging that I had produced a false letter for the record.  Of course,
31. I had not and attested to that fact in a communication prepared by the
32. mother’s private legal counsel.  The Capitol Club complaint failed. 
33.  
34. Alas, the bill I opposed passed, thus putting our client out of business as a tug operator, which stands as one of the clearest over-the-top actions by a legislature in my memory.
35.  
36. Enough for today.